To give you an idea, you'll need ~700k income by the time you get to level 65 if you want to compete. ROI on your engineering should be in the 900-1000 range to get there. If you're less than that, try investing more and spending less on gear. Or camp. Or get to the top and have trash for gear and then whine when people attack you.

Actually, I found it cheaper to be unarmed and lose to wretched farmers. This only works if you run almost completely naked though, and what's the point if you want to be able to attack at all.

Since health only regens every two minutes, and you need to be above 25 health to be attacked, you only get attacked about once every 50 minutes. And considering that at level 65 most people are doing 26-28 damage when attacking, you get killed a lot which doubles your regen time for about 10 minutes.

I was getting hit an average of 17.3 times per day between 6/1 and 7/13, losing 1% to 10% per hit. Banking at least twice per day, plus running myself to crit off friendlies or missions could keep my losses totaling 3-4 million on a daily basis. Compare that to 700k upkeep at nearly 17m per day to upkeep a full set of gear.

So, it is one strategy to run naked, but it kinda sucks. I'm up 3000 losses since May, but now I'm gearing back up and plan to ruin all the folks who've been having their way with me for the last four months.

I've got a few set up that way. Only time I ever take a hurting is if I'm away for a few days, like when I go backpacking. Can't log in to bank, and can lose lots if people find me. With some of the lower level guys, I'll go days without getting hit. Well worth it in those situations.

But then you can always bounty those people and collect with your main. Ah! Multiple devices...

Then get another. ePads are available on eBay for ~$100. Well worth the investment. In addition to having lots of players in the game, its really satisfying having six separate pron vids all going at once.